<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>To a Buried and Burning Love by CloudDreamer</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24922531">To a Buried and Burning Love</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer'>CloudDreamer</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Mechanisms (Band), Ulysses Dies at Dawn - The Mechanisms (Album)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Arson, Based on a Tumblr Post, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Non-Explicit Sex, Other, Pillow Talk</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 05:20:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>719</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24922531</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The tale Ashes didn’t tell about Ulysses.</p><p>Inspired by memecatwings ‘s EXCELLENT meta. </p><p>https://memecatwings.tumblr.com/post/621874272590249984/not-to-write-the-ulyssesashes-manifesto-at-2am-on#notes</p><p>Title from “Sunlight” by Hozier.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ashes O’Reilly/Ulysses (Ulysses Dies At Dawn)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>69</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>To a Buried and Burning Love</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ashes runs their fingers along Ulysses’s back, tracing the scars as they speak in hesitant fragments, beginning to tell a story they’d kept inside their heart all this time. They speak like they haven’t spoken in years, and maybe they haven’t, outside of half comprehensible demands for more at Calypso’s or any of the other hundred shitty bars across the city. They listen with bated breath, a breath that’s wrong, mechanical and twisted, to a tragedy, as all the best stories are. </p><p>Ulysses knows them for the Olympian that guards the dead, that controls the tormentors waves of the Acheron. They came with a desperate plea, expected to find a cold monster perched on a throne of the undying dead, and they did find a monster, yes indeed. </p><p>But Ashes is far from the cold beast they’d expected. There’s fire in their eyes, the fire of someone who’s crawled through hell and found it wanting. When Ulysses begged, they took their hand and raised them up. Cold blue eyes met warm brown. </p><p>Ashes is no Siren, falling at their request. They’re here for one last night. For a kiss on the lips, on the neck, up and down their spine. The metal in their chest burns, and when they moan, it’s a command with the fury of a thousand suns. They taste like gasoline about to ignite, their arrogance and conniving a thin disguise for a desperate hunger for more and more, and Ulysses laps it up, drunk not on whiskey but on Ashes, who laughs at all the right moments, who holds them through the wrong ones. On Ashes who is, despite everything, gentle. </p><p>Ulysses is someone real, something that’s not rusted to nothing by this damned City. They’re rough around the edges, holding Ashes with strength they’d’ve sworn they’d lost years ago. They’re haunted by all they’ve seen, all they’ve done, and they do their damnedest to burn the memories away with whiskey. Whiskey they taste still, whiskey they’ll never stop tasting till they die cuz it’s better that than the sickening copper of all the blood. </p><p>The two of them are tangled up in Ashes’s chambers: A shitty loft, right above their more traditional and impressive throne room. It was cramped, piles of random shit that they couldn’t place laying around. Ashes, the taller of them, had to bend over at the edges, and they picked through the mess to the beat up mattress, pushing off a newspaper. Ulysses’s would’ve expected a palace, from the richest, meanest bastard around, and they’d said as much. Ashes had just laughed, told them to call them by that truer name, said it’s what their favored few knew them as. </p><p>Ashes fingers are warm against their cold skin. The summers in this part of the city are sweltering, but their beat up AC in the corner of the room’s enough to make Ulysses forget. There’s oil lamps instead of fluorescent lighting, matchbooks and lighters lying scattered in piles across the floor, and Ulysses doesn’t think to ask why. If they did, if they knew what Ashes wanted with this place when they were gone, they’d agree without hesitation. They’d have this world burn. </p><p>But they don’t ask. They share a story, and Ashes shares a song. Of a world laced with lies and flames. Of betrayal. </p><p>“Lovely tale,” Ulysses says. “Is it true?” </p><p>“Dunno. Feels right enough,” they reply, their breath on their neck, perfect hair all mussed. Their neatness is as much an act of self destruction as Ulysses’s drinking is, they can see it now. They calls Ashes a lying bastard, and they laugh about that one together. Just two lying bastards and the end of the damn world. </p><p>When Ulysses lies in the street, beaten and bloody, they’ll smile with teeth missing. They’ll drag their way into that vault with energy they don’t have, for their wife and for the lying bastard that’d gotten them all fucked up in the street. There’s no doubt Ashes played them all, the Suits, Ulysses, even the other Olympians, but damn, they‘ll have done it with style. They’ll have done it with love. </p><p>Ulysses will rest in peace and honor that night, and that’s all they want. So their last words will be, “thank you” and Ashes will hide their tears.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>